Meetings
by bearsbeetsbattlestargalactica
Summary: A collection of various AU meetings of Lunar Chronicles couples set in the past, against a historical/political backdrop. Essentially, fluff mixed in with a bit of old-fashioned history. [NOW ON HIATUS]
1. Irish Girl

**A/N: This is the kickoff of a new drabble series I'm writing entitled "Meetings". It'll revolve around the AU meetings of various pairs within the Lunar Chronicles series, set in the past against a historical backdrop. A little fluffy (aren't I always?), but a little historical, too. I'll probably write about 5 other one-shots to follow this first one, but if I get requests for more, then I'll write more. Though I've got a few ideas for historical time periods, I'm always open to suggestions, and I'll be sure to give you credit for your idea. Anyway, this first one-shot is set in Brooklyn, New York, U.S.A., in 1920. It's a Scarlet/Wolf drabble. Hope you enjoy! Review and share your thoughts!**

 **Disclaimer: While I do, in fact, own a scented candle (evergreen. Delightfully Christmas-themed), I do not, in fact, own the Lunar Chronicles series, nor any of its consequent subsidiaries.**

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One

"Irish Girl"

September 8, 1920

New York, New York

 **Scarlet Benoit had been an American girl for a year now, or so her papers said.** _Immigrant,_ they read. _Came through Ellis Island in 1919._ Special year, that 1919. Repeating numbers, lucky as hell, or supposed to be, anyway. Scarlet didn't put much stock in superstition. All she got in 1919 was a lower-class ticket on a steamship that tossed and turned on a sea the color of charcoal, a heady douse of homesickness, and a rat-infested flat in Brooklyn. Not much luck to that.

Scarlet adjusted her position on the uneven barstool, looking down at her hands. They used to be beautiful hands before she came to America, creamy white skin and slender fingers, dotted with a faint spattering of freckles. They were rough and red and raw now, chapped from lye. _A worker's hands_ , Grandmère would've said. _Be proud of them, Scarlet. They show you've worked hard. They show you're no wishy-washy dilly-dallier._ Grandmère was always fond of the idiotic mash-up of English words. _Wishy-washy. Dilly-dallier._ It was as if they gave her some pleasure to roll the words off her tongue.

It was silly, Scarlet supposed, to be upset about her hands. They were just hands, after all. She'd spent the first few years of her life with dirt caked underneath her fingernails, soil ingrained into her calluses. She'd been a farmer's daughter, accustomed to work. She'd weeded and seeded and ploughed until she was blue in the face. But the dirt always washed out, though it took a bit of fervent scrubbing. Scarlet's work as a cleaning woman had tarnished her hands forever, and no washcloth would take the reddish tinge away. Cleaning women carried scars for all their lives. Scarlet had spent ages on her hands and knees, scrubbing away at the floors of grimy flats, until her back was crooked and her knees were bruised an ugly purple-green shade.

Scarlet had never been a vain girl. Eighteen years old, and she prided herself on being down-to-earth. She'd dealt with her tragedies. She'd dealt with Mama's death, the cholera whisking her away before Scarlet could blink. She'd dealt with Papa's abandonment, yanking her out of Dublin and plopping her on Grandmère's farm, on the front doorstep to her stout, creaky old house. But Scarlet hadn't dealt with leaving Ireland. She hadn't been able to stomach it. So much had been taken from Scarlet already, and she couldn't bear the thought of her homeland – the little island out in the midst of a gray-blue sea, all craggy rock and emerald stretches of grass and moss – being taken away from her, too.

"Don't throw a fit, Scarlet," Grandmère had said sternly, when Scarlet screamed and cried and protested. She was usually such an obedient girl, all _yes, ma'am_ and _yes, sir._ Something in Scarlet had snapped the day Grandmère had given her the ticket. "You're going, and that's that. You have no future in Ireland. You have no job. I've found you both a job and a future in America, and you should be grateful, groveling on your knees."

"I might have a future, and a job," Scarlet had said. "But it's not the one I want. Not away from you. Not away from Papa. Not away from Ireland."

"Very little in life happens the way we want it to, Scarlet," Grandmère had said unsympathetically. "You have to take what you're given and make the best of it."

 _Make the best of it_ , Scarlet thought now, staring down at her mug. Tepid ale swished in the cup as she set it down, the filmy surface shimmering in the dim lighting of the taproom. Working as a cleaning lady, living alone in a dank, dirty old flat sandwiched in-between crumbling buildings in the Irish neighborhood of Brooklyn, among the Sicilians and the Jews and the other immigrants from God-knows-where. _Make the best of it. Not bloody likely. Not much to make the best of._

"You alright?"

Scarlet snapped her head up, startled out of her reverie. Despite herself, her heart stuttered a bit in her chest as she saw a man sitting at the end of the bar, looking at her earnestly, a touch of sympathy in his expression. "Er… yeah," Scarlet said, raking a hand through her hair. "I… I suppose so."

The man smiled a bit at that, as if he knew she was lying. He was awfully handsome, Scarlet couldn't help noticing, if a bit on the burly side. Tall, broad-shouldered, and massive, a mess of muscle and brawn. Puckered scars marred his face, and his nose was crooked and bumpy, as if it had been broken more than a few times. A bar fighter, no doubt. That was what Scarlet got for hanging about in bars alone. Still, some part of Scarlet – the racy, adventurous part that had always made Grandmère worried – found the man's scars interesting. Behind the bulk, he had a nice pair of eyes, bright green, like the meadows back in Ireland. She felt a pang of homesickness twist her stomach. His eyes didn't fit his rough exterior. They were soft, somehow.

Scarlet turned her attention back to her mug. "I… Maybe not," she admitted, though she didn't know why. Perhaps it was the ale. Scarlet had never weathered alcohol particularly well.

"Want to talk about it?" said the man. He had a French accent, one that reminded Scarlet of Grandmère's. Lilting and soft and breathy. It sent her heart stuttering.

"You don't want to hear my problems," Scarlet said with a rueful smile. "You'll never hear the end of them."

The man grinned. _Nice smile,_ Scarlet thought. "My name's Wolf," he said, stretching out his hand.

"My name's Scarlet," she said, shaking his hand. His grip was firm and warm, and his touch sent an electric shock up her arm. "You'll regret this, you know. Listening to me and all. We Irish girls can be a bunch of chattering ninnies when we set our mind to it."

Wolf laughed. "Well, if it makes you feel any better," he said, "you're nice to listen to. Irish accent and all. You might be a bunch of chattering ninnies, but you've got beautiful voices."

It was open flattery, almost artless. But a reddish tinge creeped into Wolf's cheeks, and Scarlet felt herself smiling – really smiling – for the first time all day. She had been stuck in a puddle of melancholy since she'd dragged herself out of bed this morning, and this man – this horrible beast of a man – was pulling her out. His embarrassment was endearing, and she felt her heart swell.

"You've got a nice accent, too," Scarlet said. "Like my grandmother's." Silently, she kicked herself. What a way to flirt with a bloke: mention her grandmother. _Idiot._

Wolf chuckled at that. "I'm not sure if I should be flattered or not."

"Oh, it was," said Scarlet. "Trust me. It was a compliment."

Wolf looked sideways at her, lips twitching. Scarlet felt like banging her forehead against the bar counter. She really was quite terrible at this whole flirting thing. Still, Wolf didn't look as if he seemed to mind. He just went on smiling, making Scarlet's stomach flip and her heart do somersaults in her chest, and she wondered if he found her embarrassment endearing, too.

"Anyway," Wolf said, clearing his throat. "Your grandmother has a French accent? I thought you said you were an Irish girl."

"Oh, I am," Scarlet said, tugging at one of her bright red curls. "My name's _Scarlet_ , remember? Credit goes to my ever-original father for that one. I'm the typical Irish girl, red-haired and freckled, through and through. I can even do a bit of an Irish jig."

"An Irish jig?" Wolf seemed delighted by the prospect.

Scarlet threw back her head and laughed. "You'd have to get me a lot drunker than I am now to dance for you," she said. "Last time I attempted to jig, one of my shoes went flying across the room. Hit someone in the face, if I recall, though things were a bit woozy."

Wolf grinned. "Sounds exciting," he said.

"For everybody but the crazy girl dancing her arse off," Scarlet said moodily. "Woke up with a wretched headache and a missing left shoe the next morning."

His eyes gleamed. "Perhaps I should signal for the bartender…"

Scarlet shot him a look, but a smile still played at her lips. "Anyway, my grandmother's French. She moved to Ireland when she married my father, an Irish merchant. They met in Paris and settled down in Ireland a little later. I'm a bit of a French girl, but mostly I'm Irish, through-and-through."

"What, not American?"

Scarlet's smile disappeared. She glared at her mug. "No," she said quietly. "Not American."

They were both silent for a moment. "I understand," Wolf said after a beat.

Scarlet lifted her head. "You do?"

He nodded, tracing the rim of his cup with his index finger lazily. He had big hands, Scarlet noticed. Strong, manly hands, crisscrossed with scars. "I've never met anyone who says Brooklyn is their home," he said. "Not yet, anyway. People in Brooklyn are still Europeans, just living under an American flag. They're still Polish, or Russian, or Italian, or Irish," he said, gesturing at me. "But they had to leave their home, because to love their homeland was to die of stupidity. Everybody moves to America for a reason, be it famine, freedom, or opportunity. Underneath their American exterior, they're still the same as they always were, just free, homesick, and set adrift."

"It's been a year," Scarlet said softly. "A year exactly since I left Ireland. God, I miss it. I'd give almost anything to be back."

"Who knows?" Wolf said, looking at her intently. His eyes were bright. "Maybe you will someday. Never say never."

Scarlet gave him a half-smile, saddened and weighted down. She felt the customary sorrow begin to seep into her pores. Short lived laughs, nothing more. She was still a moody old Irish girl, just sitting at the end of the bar, reminiscing about a childhood with dirt underneath her fingernails, when ugliness could still be washed away with a bar of soap.

Then, before she knew what she was doing, she picked up her mug and her ratty old bag and moved down a few barstools, until she was directly next to Wolf. His eyes widened, but he didn't say anything; he just looked at her. He smelled nice, Scarlet thought; clean, some mixture of soap and mint. Some part of her screamed that she was being stupid, that there was no future here. But another part of her remembered Grandmère's words, about making the best of things. Wolf was an unexpected arrival. In a matter of minutes, he'd brightened up her own world, brushed aside her personal raincloud and rescued her from drowning in her sea of self-pity. Perhaps he could do it again.

Scarlet adjusted herself on her seat, crossing her ankles, tapping her leather clog on the sticky floor, picking up her mug and taking a sip. The barroom was dimly lit, light emanating from a smelly paraffin lamp. The bartender was lazily wiping down the counter, whistling some old showtune. A rowdy group of boys sat at the end of the bar, telling dirty jokes, and a group of scantily-clad girls whispered secrets in each other's ears a few seats down. A couple of college men hurled blunt darts at a pockmarked darts board, chipped and peeling with red and black paint, like a marred chessboard.

It wasn't home, Scarlet realized. But she'd grown accustomed to Brooklyn. And looking at Wolf, silly as it might seem, Scarlet no longer felt so alone. Maybe – just maybe – she could make the best of things after all.

She folded her hands on the countertop. "So," she said evenly. "Tell me about your childhood in France."

Wolf smiled.

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 **A/N: Hope you liked it! Review and share your thoughts! Constructive criticism is always appreciated!**


	2. Bloody Paradise

**A/N: Back for round two! Before I get to the story, there's a few things I'd like to say here. Firstly: thanks so much to all who reviewed. You truly make my day, whether you know it or not. Secondly: I got a request to turn "Irish Girl" into a full-fledged story. While I hadn't planned on doing that - this was meant to be more of a drabble thing - I'm not adverse to the idea, either. If I get more requests to make "Irish Girl" into a full story, I'd certainly consider it seriously. Thirdly: this one-shot is a bit darker. It deals with the Vietnam War; a new take on Cinder's missing hand and leg. It won't be quite as fluffy as the first one, but after this one-shot, I'll probably write something with the Tudors (though whether Queen Elizabeth or King Henry VIII, I haven't decided yet. Decisions, decisions), and that'll be a bit more lighthearted. But for now, I'd just like to give you all a bit of a warning. I hope you enjoy the one-shot, and please review and let me know your thoughts! Constructive criticism is always always appreciated. **

**Disclaimer: While I do, in fact, own a cat (a fat grayish-whitish house cat. Sleeps sixteen hours a day, the lucky bastard), I do not, in fact, own the Lunar Chronicles series, nor any of its consequent subsidiaries.**

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Two

"Bloody Paradise"

May 13, 1967

Vietnam

 **Over the course of Cinder Linh's nineteen years, she had suffered surprise after surprise, each more unpleasant than the last.** The surprises were always unpleasant in this place, this marshy wetland of sun-bleached grasses and drooping palm trees, swaying with a melancholy sough. It might have been a paradise, this maze of flatlands, glittering sand, and sprawling, verdant vegetation, had it not been stained with blood. But never before had Cinder suffered a surprise so very, very flooring, so cruel and so incredibly agonizing, as waking up to find that she had lost a hand and a leg.

It was the first thing she noticed, before she'd caught a glimpse of the war-torn hospital, before she'd seen the rows of lice-infested cots stretched out down the hallway, all occupied by lumpy bodies, some lifeless, some tossing and turning irregularly, going far as the eye could see. She noticed before she saw the sunlight filtering in through the windows, golden rays leaking onto the floor, puddling by the foot of her bed. She noticed before she saw the doctors. Harried-looking souls, those doctors, with fuchsia smudged in the bags hovering beneath their eyes. She noticed before she registered anything else.

A stump. No more long, brown slender fingers. No more palm crisscrossed with pale, faded white scars and deep, dirty calluses. No more fingernails, no more wrinkles, no more knuckles or joints or bones. Cinder stared uncomprehendingly at her stump, face a perfect mask of denial. Her arm ended abruptly, just closing off all of a sudden, ending in a mess of raw, puckered flesh, sensitive to the touch.

And her leg. Cinder could feel its absence rather than see it; she wasn't quite well enough to lift her head from the flat, bloodstained pillow. One of her legs ended in a stump where her thigh would've begun. She felt awkward and unbalanced, like a ladybug flipped over on its back, legs flailing up in the air. She felt a wave of despair wash over her, thickening, as if trapping her in sticky, hardening amber, a fat bug in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"Oh, my God," Cinder said. Her voice sounded funny; it echoed and reverberated through the hospital. Or perhaps that was just her head. "Oh, my _God_."

Slowly, her thoughts began to solidify. They jumbled together in a tangled mass, a ball of gnarled, knotted yarn. No more walking, Cinder realized. No more hikes, wading through the creek in the backyard of her girlhood home, pants rolled up to her shins. No more mechanics. No more sliding underneath her battered old VW bug with a wrench and a cold, hard feeling of determination, grease staining her cheeks and coveralls. No more bike-riding. No more rollercoaster rides on Coney Island in the summer, when the sun got unbearably hot and sent a trickle of sweat down her spine. No more dancing.

Cinder didn't even _like_ dancing.

Her throat felt strangled, and she emitted a soft, low sound. It was strange, almost animalistic, some sort of base expression of fear and anguish. At the horrible note, a man – more boy than man, really, standing with a cluster of people by an occupied cot – looked up, eyes darting around the room. When his eyes fell on Cinder, they softened with something, she didn't know what. Pity, perhaps. Sympathy. Disgust. All likely candidates.

"Are you alright?" the boy asked, coming toward her. He was wearing some sort of a white coat, holding a clipboard and a ballpoint pen. He looked too young to be a doctor, but he had a stethoscope strung around his neck.

Cinder didn't answer. She just stared at him.

The boy frowned, feeling her head. "You don't look as if you have a fev- Oh." His expression and tone changed when his glance went down to her hand. It went blank, wiped clean as a sheet of plain white paper. "Oh."

She felt hot tears sting her eyes. "It's gone," she whispered. "My whole hand. My leg, too. They're just… gone." She trailed off, looking at the boy, struggling for something, anything to grasp onto, just as a temporary anchor. But all she found was white-washed walls, a few strands of blood-caked hair hanging in her eyes, and the boy's face, still impassive, unmoved. No solace. No nothing.

The boy looked to be a year or two older than Cinder herself. His features were Asiatic, though not quite like the Vietnamese; there were a few variations here and there. He had light brown skin, color of coffee doused with cream, and almond-shaped coppery-brown eyes. Handsome, Cinder couldn't help but notice, even under duress, with that straight nose and well-defined lips; curvy, full, and sweet for a boy. Not that he'd look at her twice, not now. Not the way she was.

Cinder wondered if anyone would ever look at her twice again.

"It's alright," the boy said softly, putting an arm on her shoulder. After a temporary moment of shock, he seemed mostly undeterred. It made sense, Cinder supposed. If he really was a doctor, he'd be used to this sort of thing; severed limbs and paraplegics. "My name's Kai. I'm Dr. Erland's assistant," he said, jerking his head over to where a short man with watery blue eyes was standing, just a few feet away, talking to some other victim, some other poor soul fallen prey to this horrible land, this horrible war.

"Oh," Cinder managed.

Kai's eyebrows furrowed, and he glanced at the clipboard attached to the end of her bed. "What's your name?" he asked. "This thing hasn't been filled out properly."

And then, just like that, Cinder wasn't in the hospital anymore. She was in the backyard of her childhood home, in a jumper, her hair roped into stringy pigtails, watching her younger stepsister chase through a field, clutching a bundle of wildflowers.

" _Cinder!" Peony called, running through the knee-high grass. She was clutching a sprig of Queen Anne's Lace in her child-sized fist, tripping over hills and valleys in the uneven meadow. "Look at what I found for Mom!"_

 _Cinder found herself grinning. "Mom will love them, Peony," Cinder said, ruffling her younger stepsister's shiny curls as Peony came to rest, panting, beside Cinder._

 _"_ _She's not your mother," Pearl said with a sniff, standing off to the side. Pearl sent Cinder a scathing glance. "Never will be, you know," Pearl continued, eyes sparking maliciously. "You're hardly even a Linh. Just legally. Not by blood. Not in the way it counts."_

"Cinder Linh," Cinder whispered, blinking rapidly. The flashback vanished almost as soon as it had appeared, melting into the thick, cloying May air. Vietnam was a hellhole in May, all sweat and blood and tears, or at least so it seemed to Cinder.

"Good," Kai said, squeezing her shoulder. "Can you tell me anything you remember?"

He was so kind, so gentle. It was too bad Cinder was only half-present. Trauma had whisked her back into her past, transporting her to a different place, a different time, when she still had all limbs and extremities.

 _Bright flashes surrounded Cinder in a thick, hazy embrace Distantly, Cinder realized that this – this inferno of blazing color and flame and screams, of the color crimson staining everything, everywhere, this pandemonium of blooming chaos and terror – must be what the inside of a campfire was like. Something landed a few yards away, sending an explosion of dirt shooting up into the smoky air. She gripped the gun, uneasy with the foreign piece of metal, black and solid and strange._

 _"_ _I don't know how to shoot," she'd said to the man in the uniform, somewhat desperately. She was a mechanic. Not a nurse. Not a soldier. "I don't know how to use this thing. I'm better off staying here, with the trucks."_

 _"_ _Wanna be a coward? Yellow-bellied, timid?"_

 _"_ _No, but I-"_

 _"_ _I don't care if you know how to use a gun or not. Figure it out, or shoot yourself in the foot. I don't care either way, just get out of my sight and quit being such a goddamn sissy while people are dying!"_

"Flashes," muttered Cinder now. "Light. A gun I didn't know how to use."

Kai twisted his lips in a fit of frustration. "Anything else?" he prodded. "Anything else at all you can tell me?"

" _I'm dying," Peony said. Her face was ashy-gray. "Cancer, they said. I don't know what kind. Some kind. Some horrible kind. But I'm dying, Cinder, and I'm scared. Please help me. Please. I'm begging you. Please help me."_

 _Cinder looked around the hospital room, at the vase of wilting roses on the windowsill. They sagged, a hopeless bunch of dejected souls, wrapped up in purple tissue paper, crinkly and wrinkled, dotted with finger smudges. Veiny petals pooled on the windowsill and on the linoleum floor, mashed into a pulp._

 _"_ _I…" Cinder said, but found there was nothing to say. No words of comfort. After all, how could someone offer comfort when they were so in need of it themselves?_

 _Peony turned away from Cinder. "Never mind," Peony said. "Just never mind."_

"Peony was dying," Cinder said in the present, her throat catching.

"What?" Now Kai looked confused. "What was that?"

" _I don't want her, Garan!" Adri screamed. "Some illegal immigrant from Asia! What are you thinking? How could you be so cruel, so careless? We have children of our own to care for, and as of now, you haven't created any revolutionary scientific discoveries to support us, let alone some… some…"_

 _"_ _She was all alone, Adri," Garan said. "Her father had abandoned them, her mother had died. Some sort of lung cancer, I think. She was left in the care of her abusive aunt. Her aunt would've killed her. You didn't see her. A crueler woman never walked the earth. I had to save her. I had to. There was no other choice."_

 _"_ _You didn't_ have _to do anything," Adri said cuttingly._

 _Cinder crouched by the wall, listening to her new stepmother and stepfather fight, wrapping her arms tightly around her, wishing she could fade into the lily-patterned wallpaper._

"Adri and Garan don't want me…" she mumbled, half to herself.

Kai took her hand, the one that hadn't been marred, the one that still had fingers attached. "Hey," Kai said, so gently Cinder felt her heart shatter into a thousand tiny pieces. "It's okay." He tucked a stray curl of hair behind Cinder's ear. "It'll be okay – Cinder, was it?" At Cinder's nod, he smiled. "I promise."

A tear slid down Cinder's cheek. "How can you say that?" she whispered, chest tight. "How can you know? I'm stuck here, in the middle of Vietnam, a mechanic-turned-soldier when things got bad, now with a missing leg and a missing hand…" She let out a choked, strangled sound.

Kai wiped a tear from Cinder's cheeks. "I just know," he said simply. "Things just turn out alright in the end. It seems impossible now, but you'll survive this. I swear. And anyway, I've got a feeling about you." He tilted his head, and for some reason, Cinder felt heat creep into her cheeks. Trauma, she thought. "You're strong. This isn't the first tragedy you've faced. I can tell."

Cinder just stared at him, tears silently streaking down her cheeks.

"You'll make it through this," Kai said, squeezing her hand. "And you've got me to help you."

Cinder swallowed. "Thank you," she said.

"Anytime," Kai said, with that same old sad smile. But instead of breaking Cinder's heart, it seemed to pick up a few jagged pieces and put them together again. A patchy work, rushed and messed-up, not quite aligning, but an improvement all the same. "Pleased to meet you, Cinder Linh."

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 **A/N: Hope you all enjoyed, though it was sad. Please review!**


	3. Tory

**A/N: I'm back, after a bit of an extended waiting period (so sorry about that). I wish I had a better excuse than the old broken record - writer's block - but sorry to say, I don't. Everything I wrote was truly terrible, I promise, and even this one-shot is a little less than I'd like it to be. Oh, well...**

 **Anyway, I've a few orders of business to take care of. Firstly, I'd just like to thank all reviewers. You have no idea how much you brighten up my day. It's enough for a One Direction song. Thank you so, so much. You're all angels, with those fluffy white wings that look like frosting.**

 **For those of you who want to stay tuned on the** ** _Irish Girl_** **saga and all unintended stories: I'm going to write it. At this point, all of my fabulously fantabulous (alright, so that's not a word, but the word I really WANT to use is "stupendous", and I can't use that word without sounding like an ass - wait, does FanFiction allow authors to swear in the author's notes? Aw, screw it - so you're going to have to make do with "fantabulous") reviewers have given me enough requests. I've finished a Preface, and I've started on the first chapter. I'm thinking heavy doses of intrigue, worldwide travel, an extreme romance story, etc. But, first a few things concerning the story, which I've organized in a numbered list so as to make life easier (for those of you who don't care, just skip down to the underlined phrase):**

 **1\. The long-winded, full-fledged story will be set ten years in the past, beginning probably around 1912. Eight years, actually, now that I see it. (Dammit, math, you strike again.) Anyway, I'll set it in 1912 in order to get some more historical intrigue - sinking of the** ** _Titanic,_** **World War I drama, Spanish Influenza maybe, depending on how sadistic I am on any given day, so on and so forth. If anybody has any objections to that, I'll try and do the roaring twenties, but I honestly think it'll be better beginning in 1912.**

 **2\. The original one-shot probably won't be included in the actual story. The general** ** _premise_** **will remain the same - Irish immigrant drowning in a sea of homesickness, etc. - but I think it'll be better if I scrap the one-shot in order to give Miss Benoit and Mr. Kesley some more UST. (For all of you innocents who don't know what that is, look it up for me. Ah, look at me, corrupting youth. Yippee!)**

 **3\. Because I am in fact a teenager, and while my social life isn't bursting with intrigue - I'm really as introverted as you can get. If I could buy a snail shell and strap it to my back, I would - things** ** _do_** **get in the way. There are two ways I can write this story: I can (1) write the whole thing and** ** _then_** **hand it off to a Beta reader with updates twice a week, or (2) write and hand off each chapter to a Beta reader as soon as I'm done, posting it when I get my act together. There are pros and cons to each of these. If you choose Option 1, you probably won't get the story until late spring, depending on how long I make it. If you choose Option 2, updates are going to be irregular. It's just a given. Teachers are out to ruin my life, I'm afraid. Either way, just PM me or comment on this story, letting me know on which you'd prefer, and I'll go from there.**

 **4\. If there are any Beta readers out there who will read** ** _Irish Girl,_** **please oh God please, make yourselves known. My writing is fraught - FRAUGHT - with every type of error you can possibly think of. Anybody who'd be brave enough to suffer through that, be my guest. (Wasn't that a Disney song?)**

 **Secondly,** **as far as the actual drabble goes** **: I lied. This isn't Tudor-era, this is set in the years leading up to the American Revolutionary War. I'm sorry, I'm a pathological liar, I should be on medication, I know, I know. But, even though I'm a liar and should obviously be punished, I hope you'll like it. Cress/Thorne, one of my favorite ships EVER. And yes, the romance is SUPER cheesy. I think I literally broke every cliche rule in the book. But I did that to attempt to channel Cress's character, so... Excusable, I guess? I don't know. I'm tired, I've got a test on World War I and the Russian Revolution tomorrow (assuming hell doesn't freeze over first. JESUS, I hate winter) and this long-winded, extremely sarcastic (I should really try and get that under control) author's note has come to an end. Cue sigh of relief.**

 **That finished, on with the story!**

 **Oh, dammit, I almost forgot: While I do, in fact, own a record player (which I have recently found, to my delight, is NOT broken) I do not, in fact, own the Lunar Chronicles series, or any of its consequent subsidiaries.**

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Three

"Tory"

January 3, 1774

Boston, Massachusetts, The Thirteen Colonies

 ** _Head down, shoulders relaxed, smile on your face._** _Shuffle your feet, just a bit of a scuffle, and watch out for patches of ice. Don't let the hem of your skirt drag in the mud. Don't make eye contact unless you can avoid it. Breathe. That's the most important thing: breathe._

 _You're not really here. You're back in England – but this time, you're not starving, hunched in the corner of a poorhouse. A rat with beady black eyes isn't scuttling across your foot, a rounded spider isn't dangling by your ear. This time, you're a wealthy member of the English gentry, wearing vermilion gowns with gold brocade and powdered wigs, with rubies the size of robin's eggs dangling from your ears. You're not really in Boston. You're not really here._

Cress Darnel sidestepped a pile of sludge on the uneven, cobblestoned streets of Boston, wrinkling her nose at the murky waste pooled in an indentation in the road. The bottom of her plain, itchy dress just managed to escape the puddle. Cress wondered what would happen if she returned to Mistress Mira's dignified townhouse in that state – reeking of urine and foul odors, hem of her dress dripping, sodden with God-knows-what. She would be a blight on the pristine residence; Mistress Mira would probably call her a disease, and other, more colorful, terms. For a member of the English gentry, Mistress Mira had quite a mouth. Cress shivered and pulled her threadbare cloak tighter around her shoulders, as if the flimsy piece of fabric could shield her from both the biting January gale and the intensity of Mistress Mira's fury.

Cress's mind went back to her thoughts. _You're not really here,_ she told herself firmly. It made life a little easier, to pretend she was some grand lady or duchess in the land of England, instead of an isolated servant of a known Loyalist in the Thirteen Colonies. Loyalists, those who supported King George III of England, the ruler of the mother country that ruled over the Thirteen Colonies, were taboo in Boston now. It was Patriot or nothing, far as the citizens of Massachusetts were concerned. Revolution was the only way for the Patriots, and revolution meant war. _Taxation without representation,_ the Patriots cried. And as for those who were still loyal to the English crown, those who weren't yet clamoring for a revolution, those who were content to sit back and let England govern from afar…

Those poor souls could face the end of a Patriot's rifle for all they knew. Tensions had hit a fever pitch. Cress, maid to Lady Sybil Mira, knew that well enough. She lived in Boston, after all, center of the bloody rebellion, privy to all the gory details. She saw the invisible vultures circling overhead. People had hissed or shouted 'tory' at her in the streets more times than she could count. The slurs echoed in Cress's head now, amidst the plaintive cries of ivory seagulls overhead and the clicking of the cobblestones under her worn boots.

 _Tory_ : the derogatory name for a Loyalist. It didn't matter to these people that Cress was an indentured servant, waiting on Mistress Mira hand-and-foot just to escape debtor's prison or the poorhouse, thanks to the mountain of debts her father had left Cress when he died. These bitter rants were familiar to her; familiar as the scent of sea brine and rotting fish, living as she did so close to the docks.

No. It didn't matter to these people that Cress's servitude was a matter of survival. It didn't matter to these people that she wasn't even a Loyalist herself – Cress tended to lean more toward the Patriot side of things.

Lean quite a bit, actually. But Cress would sooner eat worms than admit she wanted a revolutionary war. She could only imagine what Mistress Mira would say then.

"Hey! Hey, you!"

Cress froze in the middle of the street, her back rigid. Immediately, her old chant began repeating itself, reverberating in her skull: _Head down. Shoulders relaxed. Shuffle your feet, just a bit of a scuffle. Don't make eye contact unless you can avoid it. Breathe. That's the most important thing…_

"You!" A boy tugged on the sleeve of her dress. Cress blinked down at him owlishly, white-faced, heart thumping in her chest. It was just a little boy, not a Patriot extremist ready to gut her. He looked to be no more than five or six, dressed in rags, with a soot-stained face and grubby hands. He smelled like the puddle Cress had nearly traipsed through earlier.

"Er…" Cress swallowed a lump in her throat, eyes darting around. _Relax_ , she told herself. _Acting nervous will only draw their attention, and then you'll have a whole host of Patriots to contend with. Relax._

"I've a message for you," the boy said, grinning cheekily. Her stomach twisted, and a squirming sensation started in her gut, an invisible snake writhing in her belly.

"From whom?" Cress asked, craning her neck to peer over the crowd. There were plenty of people about – women wearing little bonnets in flower-print dresses, servants scurrying around with pale, drawn faces, a few men just staggering home from a rowdy night in the bar in the early morning light laden with thick, plumy fog. Men on their way to work, some in powdered wigs, some not, all with drawn faces, and a few driving rickety carts down the road, snapping their reins at sweat-plastered workhorses. She felt a pang of sympathy for the poor creatures. She knew what it was to be worked nearly to death.

"From the man over there," the boy said, jerking his thumb. Cress followed his gaze and saw a portly man sitting by a general store, leaning against the wall. He gave her a grin. A gold tooth in his gummy smile winked in the sunlight filtering through the clouds. He looked to be a poor man, dressed in stained rags, and Cress thought she saw a fly buzzing around his dirty wig, lazy and plump.

"I'm not sure I want to hear this message," she began, attempting to detach herself from the boy's iron grip. For such a small thing, he was strong. _You're not really here,_ she thought. _You're a marchioness, and you're in a ballroom. All eyes are turned to you, for you look ravishing tonight, or so says the handsome gentleman over by the wall to his friend, though your cheeks pink in shock, but secretly, you're delighted…_

The boy grinned. "He says to meet him 'round back the general store later," he said, voice dropping in a conspiratorial whisper. "For lots of fun, he said. _Loads_ of fun."

Cress's eyes widened, and almost without thinking, she raised her hand and slapped the boy across the face with an audible _smack._ People stopped to stare in the streets, and Cress felt panic in her belly, a swarm of butterflies taking flight. "Let me go, boy," she said, attempting to wrench her hand free.

The boy let her go, but spat on her shoe and stamped on her foot. Cress let out a hiss of pain. _You're not really here,_ she thought frantically. _You're not really here. You're not really here. You're not really here…_

"Hey," a voice said – deep, gravelly, one that made her skin crawl. "Am I to take that as you're secretly excited and pleased at my invitation, girlie?" There was the man, towering above her, leering with that gold-toothed smile. He was even viler up close, reeking of sweat and grime, with a pockmarked face marred by a white, raised scar. His meaty hand closed around her wrist just as quickly as the boy had let go.

"Let me go," Cress said, her voice ringed with panic. _You're not really here. You're not really here. You're not really here. You're not really here._ " _Let me go_!"

"I don't think so, girlie," the man started. But just before Cress could finish another one of her _You're not really here_ chants, there was a _thud_ , a _crack,_ and Cress found herself free, unbalanced from the struggle of yanking her arm from the man's grip, moments away from landing on her arse in a pool of festering waste.

"You alright there?"

Cress was safe. She wasn't about to land on her arse. Though purple-blue bruises were blooming on her wrists, she was free at long last. And she was balanced, her hem unmarred with shit or God-knew-what-else. She was safe. She was alright. There was warm pair of hands on her waist, holding her steady. The hold on her was different from the one the repugnant man had held – softer, more reassuring than oppressing. And whoever was holding her smelled of saltwater, a bit briny, perhaps salty, faintly of fish and the undefinable aroma of _ocean,_ but not in an unpleasant way, instead of the sickly-sweet scent of alcohol the walrus of a man had carried earlier, the fume ingrained into his skin.

Cress looked up, peering through her lashes, and saw a grinning face looking down at her. Her heart stuttered for a moment, and Cress forgot to think that she wasn't really there. Right then, Cress wouldn't have wanted to be anywhere else.

She had always been a bit of a hopeless romantic. For as long as she could remember, she had been pilfering novels from first her parents' shelves, before they passed away from smallpox, and later Mistress Mira's shelves, reading at night, tallow candle leaking wax onto the scarred end table in her dank, dim bedroom. It was a treasure that Cress was able to read at all, a gift of her father's, the one thing Sage Darnel had done right in his short, pathetic life, and she cherished it, every moment of every day. Cress had always loved the romantic books best, the ones with a dashing hero come to save the heroine. Ever since she was little, she'd secretly dreamed such a hero would appear in her own humdrum life and rescue her from her servitude.

And now such a hero had arrived, or so it appeared through Cress's rose-tinted lens of naïveté. He was towering over her, six feet tall at least, dwarfing Cress's own diminutive frame. He had sandy brown hair, half-obscured with his mud-spotted tricorn, tied into a ponytail just barely visible from Cress's stance. Clear blue eyes, the color of the Atlantic on a good day, when it wasn't gray-brown and murky, like tepid water, but rather a light blue, reflecting the wide, open sky. And he was smiling – a straight, even smile. A _perfect_ smile.

"Er…" Cress said, her voice uneven and husky. She cleared her throat, embarrassed.

The boy let her go, stepping back. Cress felt a bit disappointed. "I said, 'you alright'?" the boy asked again, tipping his hat. A ribbon wrapped around the rim fluttered into his forehead.

Cress glanced around. The man had receded; she could just see his large girth disappearing down the street, along with the urchin. The pipsqueak glowered at her over his shoulder. The walrus-man was clutching his eye as if it were injured. Cress turned around, and saw that the boy in the tricorn's hand was swollen and reddened. He'd punched the horrid man, then. Cress thought she might have swooned a little.

"Er… yes," Cress said, shaking her head as if to clear it of cobwebs. "Yes. I'm perfectly fine, thank you."

The boy smiled. _Perfect smile,_ Cress thought, feeling lightheaded and giddy. "Glad to hear it," he said, outstretching a hand. His voice was laced with a thick accent, heady with cockney. _Endearing,_ Cress thought, her heart skipping a beat. "My name's Captain Carswell Thorne. But you can just call me 'Captain'." He tipped his hat at her.

"You're a captain?" Cress asked, a bit surprised. He looked too young to be a captain.

"Well… er… sort of," Captain Carswell Thorne said, cheeks tinging red. He looked uncertain for the first time. He scratched the back of his neck. "See, thing is… it's not… Well, that is to say… It's not _exactly_ mine. The ship, I mean. Well, it is, but it's not. If that… makes any sense."

Cress stared at him.

"At all," he finished, clearing his throat.

"Right," she said, stuffing a giggle back down her throat. "Well. Pleased to meet you, Captain Carswell Thorne. My name's Cress Darnel."

Thorne grinned. "Nice to meet you, Miss Darnel," he said, bowing with a bit of a fake flourish. Somewhere, a clock struck eight, ringing out through the street. Thorne sighed, looking a bit regretful. "That's eight o'clock. I had better get back to my ship."

"The one that's yours, but not?" Cress supplied.

Thorne laughed uneasily. "Yeah. That one." He shuffled his feet, and turned on his heel, as if ready to make his way back to the ship that was his, but wasn't.

"Wait!" Cress said, lunging forward. Without thinking, she caught the sleeve of his coat. She immediately withdrew, but saw Thorne give her a pleasant smile. A perfect smile. "Er, I just wanted to say, you know. Thanks. For saving my life and all."

"Anytime, Miss Darnel," Thorne said, tipping his hat. He looked amused. "I hope to see you around, sometime. I'd hate for this to be our last meeting. Tell me, you always walk this way around eight o'clock in the morning?"

"Yes," Cress said, a bit too eagerly. She nodded, attempting to look a bit more dignified. She saw Thorne's lips twitch. "On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, anyway. I go to the grocer's down the street to pick up a few things for Mistress Mira – my employer." _Babble, babble, babble,_ she thought, resisting the urge to slam her palm against her forehead.

"See you on Friday then," Thorne said. Cress noticed he had a dimple in his smile. "Until next time, Miss Darnel."

And then, with another tip of his hat and a wink that reeked of scoundrel and rascal, he turned on his heel for good this time, swaggering down the Boston street as if he hadn't a care in the world. Cress couldn't help noticing that he'd never asked if she were a Patriot or a Tory. It was as if he hadn't even cared.

Cress Darnel smiled to herself, and this time, walking down the Boston street interwoven with puddles of brackish water and abrasive Patriots, she kept her head held high.

* * *

 **A/N: So that's that! Any requests for the next one-shot - pairings, time periods, or otherwise? Review and let me know!**


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